The Priciest Steak Frites I've Tried All Year!
Reviews of the Mishima strip and the Australian wagyu at Blue Ribbon in Midtown
See you next week with more fun year-end content and maybe even an essay!
I had a nice meal at Lei recently, but today, please enjoy this column about a pricey Midtown steakhouse — a little follow-up to last week’s big steak guide.
Blue Ribbon Sushi & Steak | The wagyu steak frites!
I ate a lot of steak this year.
Not all of it made its way into The Steak Guide.
I’m saving some cuts for next spring’s Budget Steak List. Others simply didn’t make the grade, as is the case with a certain beefy roast from The View. I had an absolute blast at the revamped Monkey Bar; the room boasts the type of pulsing energy that recalls pre-pandemic Manhattan. Alas, the prime rib isn’t quite best-in-class. Get the French dip instead!
And then, there’s Blue Ribbon Sushi & Steak, right across from Madison Square Garden.
The kitchen cooks up some serious steaks, though it’s not alone in that regard…
The Penn District restaurant is one of three steakhouses (!!!) on a single block in Midtown. Yeah, that’s a lot of red meat, and I’m generally not in the business of reviewing every single new bastion of beef.
But Blue Ribbon — a 90s-era chef’s hangout that transformed itself into a national empire — does two things of note at this location. Namely:
It serves very small steaks.
It sears its priciest cuts on a teppan — the blazing hot steel griddle you’ve seen at stateside Japanese spots like Benihana. It’s a style of cooking that doesn’t appear in New York with as much frequency (or fanfare) as gas grills, wood fires, or binchotan coals.
Let’s take a closer look…